Swimming with Jeeps off Vanuatu

I thought this was worth sharing.
Has anyone dove this area?



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...nt/7219429.stm

By Nick Squires
BBC, South Pacific

Sixty years on from World War II, an act of environmental vandalism is
proving to be a valuable asset for the tiny South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.

Scattered on the seabed is what looks like the shattered remains of a
phantom army.

Peering through my diver's mask at first I could make out little more than
ghostly shapes.

But as I descended deeper into the green-tinged gloom, a bizarre sight
unfolded before me.

Resting on the seabed were military trucks, up-ended jeeps, and
powerful-looking army bulldozers.

There were twisted metal girders and rubber tyres, their treads still
clearly visible.

Half buried in the sand I found a vintage Coca-Cola bottle. I dug it out and
slipped it into my wetsuit as a souvenir.

Strange story

This is Million Dollar Point, one of the world's most unusual diving spots.

It is a vast undersea junkyard lying just a few metres off a pristine white
beach on the island of Espiritu Santo in the South Pacific nation of
Vanuatu. How it came to be here is one of the stranger stories of World War
II.

Before independence Vanuatu was an obscure Anglo-French territory known as
the New Hebrides.

From 1942 it became the focus of a massive military build-up by the
Americans.

Half a million or more US troops poured into the tiny colony in preparation
for the great counter-offensive against the Japanese.

Coconut plantations were cleared, local men were recruited as porters, and
the sleepy colonial outposts of Port Vila and Luganville were transformed
into bustling military hubs.

Once the war was won, the Americans were faced with the problem of what to
do with all the military material they had accumulated.

The high cost of shipping made it too expensive to send back to the States.

So the Americans offered to sell much of the equipment to the French and
British.

But the colonial authorities calculated that the Americans would have to
leave everything behind anyway, so why pay for it?

Their bluff failed in spectacular fashion.

Watery junkyard

In a fit of pique, the Americans decided to dump immense quantities of
supplies instead of giving them away for free.

Navy engineers known as Seabees built a jetty and simply drove the unwanted
Jeeps, trucks, and bulldozers into the sea.

Sixty years on these weapons of war have become a remarkably rich artificial
reef. The abandoned vehicles are encrusted with vivid red and yellow corals.

I swam idly past a bulldozer and noticed a pink and blue shrimp perched
delicately on the driver's metal seat, where once a GI would have sat.

The barrel of an enormous naval gun was inhabited by a cluster of clams.

As a couple of flipper kicks took me ever deeper, a lionfish emerged from
behind a rusted axle.

An enduring legacy of mankind's most deadly conflict, Million Dollar Point
is now an asset to Vanuatu, attracting divers from all over the world.

Acclaimed wreck

Many of them take in an equally spectacular dive site a little way along the
coast.

The USS President Coolidge was a luxury liner when it was converted into a
troop ship at the outbreak of war.

In 1942 it was carrying 5,000 men when it accidentally hit two American
mines.

The quick-thinking captain managed to ground it on a reef, allowing all but
two of its officers and men to wade ashore.

An hour later, it slid beneath the waves and is now one of the most
acclaimed wreck dives in the world.

Those who venture into its flooded decks and cargo holds encounter a weird
mixture of civilian luxury - chandeliers, a tiled swimming pool - and raw
military necessity, including gas masks and ammunition.

It is not just Vanuatu that is benefiting from the detritus of war.

In Papua New Guinea a guide led me into a patch of jungle which was once a
Japanese military airfield.

Lying crumpled amid the luxuriant foliage was a Japanese bomber, its ribbed
fuselage and skull-like nose cone resembling the skeleton of some great
prehistoric beast. Bullet holes showed where it had been attacked by Allied
fighter planes as it struggled to take off from the long-forgotten tropical
airstrip.

In the neighbouring Solomon Islands, one sea channel is so littered with
sunken American and Japanese warships that it is known as Ironbottom Sound.

Hellcat fighter planes sit on the ocean floor, their machine guns silenced
forever. Where once they were strafed by Japanese Zeros, now they are
circled by sharks.

Machines designed to take life have instead spawned new life in the South
Pacific.

Million Dollar Point may be an indictment of the appalling wastefulness of
war. But it has become one of Vanuatu's best known attractions. As such it
needs to be preserved just as it is.

As I shrugged off my air tank at the end of the dive, I reached into my
wetsuit and threw that scavenged Coke bottle back into the sea. Keeping it
just did not seem right.

Even underwater junkyards deserve some respect.